With the first presentations of the 2025 London-wide Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment research being made this week, London Gypsies and Travellers and other community organisations continue to call for urgent corrections to be made to the draft.
Errors made in the research result in the number of pitches and other accommodation required being underestimated by more than half.
Since 2022 the Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment, commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and conducted by an independent research body, has been evaluating the need for pitches and other adequate accommodation for Gypsies, Roma, Travellers and Travelling Showpeople in the capital.
This assessment will be used as the basis of the next London Plan. In 2017, after his election, London Mayor Sadiq Khan committed to creating a city where the accommodation needs of all Londoners, including Gypsies and Travellers, are met. Following input to the 2021 London Plan by LGT and other community groups, the Mayor clarified that the plan required borough planners “to meet identified need for permanent Gypsy and Traveller pitches and include ten-year pitch targets”.
However, successive drafts of the assessment have used a flawed methodology and contained inaccuracies which mean that the need for new pitches over the next ten years is significantly underestimated. LGT and other community organisations represented on the steering group have raised these issues with GLA planners and the needs assessment researchers many times since 2022. Last month, they felt obliged to write to Deputy Mayor Tom Copley to again draw attention to the errors and ask for their names to be taken off the final report.
“Despite raising our serious concerns with the GLA about the undercount of the actual need for pitches – which is the result of poor research methods – the GLA has concluded that the report is ‘robust’ and going through the approval process,” said Nancy Hawker, LGT’s Policy and Research Officer.
“We are still hopeful that the London-wide Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment will be corrected, so as to provide an accurate and fair evidence base for building the affordable housing we need – as the Mayor committed to do. The alternative is to push minorities protected under the Equality Act into homelessness and out of London. We stand for an inclusive vision where all London’s diversity is accommodated.”
Among the failures of the needs assessment are:
- The researchers’ methodology for calculating cultural preference for living on a pitch rather than in bricks and mortar has not been agreed with community experts and has resulted in an inaccurate reduction of pitch need.
- Much of the assessment report and conclusions do not reflect the Roma context or key findings – failing to address overcrowding, which is one of most significant housing issues experienced by Roma.
- The reliance on census data for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller populations of London is highly controversial because they are known to be undercounts.
An accessible briefing paper on the problems with the London-wide Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment is available for download.
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